This blog addresses the fatal flaw at the core of capitalism as a system of human psycho-socio-political-economic collective self-reproduction, a flaw which ultimately renders it a self-DIS-organizing, self-destroying system -- as is becoming increasingly evident. It also details the successor system to capitalism, the new system that represents the higher, positive way forward for humanity: Political-ECONOMIC DEMOCRACY, or EQUITISM.

Monday, February 29, 2016

FYI:The
F.E.D. General Council, and most of
the rest of the Foundation,
have prevailed upon F.E.D. co-founder Karl Seldon to
publish, as F.E.D. Vignette #25, a re-edited,
updated, and expanded version of his long-ago oral remarks on the topic of The Uttermost Rootof ‘The Modern Ideology’, an edited transcript of
the earlier version of which has already been published earlier this month, in
this blog --

Wednesday, February 24, 2016

The Elision and Re-Emergence of the ArithmeticalQualifiers and Marx’s«arché»,“The Elementary Form of Value”’.

Dear Readers,

It is my pleasure to share
with you, from time to time, selections from the seminal sayings, shared by him
among we of F.E.D., that are regularly spoken forth by F.E.D.’s
co-founder, Karl Seldon, once the transcripts of such are released, by the F.E.D.
General Council, for public sharing.The
text reproduced below is a case in point.The standard E.D. editors’ edits have been applied to this text.In this case, I have also appended some key Encyclopedia
Dialectica diagrammatic
modules, which may help to illustrate Seldon’s account, below.

Regards,

Miguel

P.S.As of 23FEB2016, I have received
special dispensation, from the F.E.D.
General Council, and from the F.E.D.
Special Council of Psychohistorians, in joint session, to publicly
release additional portions of the transcripts of Seldon’s remarks on this
topic, now included below, and also including some new edits by Seldon himself.

“ . . . [proto-]humancivilization, science,
mathematics did
not simply pick-up again, at the end of, or as the end of, the [northern] Mediterranean/European Dark Ages, at exactly the point where they had left
off, at the point of their zenith
development by the time of the catastrophic
fall of the ancientMediterraneanCivilizations, that
culminated in the Roman/Hellenisticcivilization,
prior to that catastrophic fall.”

“There were collective-cognitive
‘psychohistorical hystereses’.”

“Psychohistorical changes, changes
in the Mediterranean/western European ‘‘‘memes-pool’’’,
‘humanphenome’, or ‘humanmemenome’ -- changes
in collective human «mentalité»
-- had continued to accumulate throughout these [regional] Dark Ages --
especially, and at a slowly accelerating pace, during the socio-politico-economic
‘upsurgence’ &the ‘re-burgeoning’
of mercantile commerce, that drove the prelude to the European Renaissance -- as
adumbrated in the groundbreaking 1997 C.E. book
The Measure of Reality:Quantification and Western Society, 1250-1600, by Alfred W. Crosby.”

“This cumulativeshift in occidental ‘human-societalself-reproductivepraxis’, and, consequently, in the occidental ‘humanphenome’, manifested itself, “even” in the rarefied
‘‘‘superstructural’’’ realm of re-emergent theoretical mathematics, including in
the form of the Renaissanceelision of the ancientMediterranean, circa250 C.E., diophantine ‘onto-metricalarithmetical qualifier’,
Mo.”

“That “syncopated” symbol was psychohistorically rooted in the even more ancient, circa3000
B.C.E., Mesopotamian ‘‘‘incised/impressed-token-image’’’ ‘proto-arithmetical’ ontological and metrical‘qualifier’‘‘‘proto-symbols’’’,
as described by Dr. Denise
Schmandt-Besserat in her 1992 C.E. breakthrough book Before Writing:From Counting to Cuneiform.”

“Diophantus’s Mo, was excluded
from this re-awakening western European arithmetic and algebra, and, in cases like that of Simon Stevin, this elision was greeted with considerable explicit -- &favorable
-- awareness.”

“The mystery that Alfred
Crosbyfailed to solve in his . . . Quantification
and Western Society. . . -- the mystery of the massive psychohistoricalshift in the Western European branch of the ‘humanphenome’,that he documents so richly therein -- was
already solved, long ago, as early as 1867 C.E., or even earlier, by Karl Marx, in his monumental discernment
of what he called the “Elementary or Accidental Form of Value”.”

“This “Elementary Form of Value”
is notonly
the startingpoint, the «arché» -- within ourcontemporaryglobal capitalist system, the ever-presentorigin and foundation, and also
the past
[psycho]historicalfoundation -- for
Marx’s entire
treatise, for his entirefour+ volume systematic[-dialectical] presentation of the contentcharacterizing“Modern Society”, i.e., for
his theoretical explanation
of the ‘Capitals-System’;
for his entiredialectical,
immanentcritique of the ‘ideologized’science of ‘‘‘capitalistpolitical-economics’’’.”

“That “Value-Form” -- as the past [psycho]historical, and as
the ever-present meme-seed, throughout the capitalist epoch, of all forms of [the exchange-]value -- is also the foundation, bothever-present
and past
[psycho]historical, of ‘theModern «Mentalité»’ itself; of [not just “The German Ideology”,
but, as well, of] ‘The MODERN
Ideology’entire.”

“The “Elementary Form of Value”
is the cognitive, ideologicalbasis of “Modern Society”, of ‘“Modernity”’ -- i.e., of capitalist civilization --
as a whole; the mostradicalroot of theCapital“Value-Form”[Marx] itself, and of theCapital-[value-]relation
as predominant “social relation of production”.”

“That “Elementary Form of Value”
is, in its
essence, the incessant
contemporaryequating
-- implicit in and permeating the inveterate
«praxis» ofourdailylives,
globally, today, in and by the
“exchange of equivalents”, e.g., the exchange, for Money, of twoqualitatively differentCommodities -- let’s call them, generically,
C1&C2 -- that are incommensurable
in their qualitative, use-value core,
but that are apparently,
superficially,
equated by “pure”quantityalone, i.e., by “[proto-] price”, in a «praxis» which continually,
uncritically inculcates in us
a semi-conscious paradigm
of the habitualreduction of the qualitative to the “purely”quantitative. [Note:arithmeticalqualifierideograms
are distinguished
from arithmeticalquantifierideograms, herein, by underscoring/underlining].”

“In the exchange-equation(c1)C1=(c2)C2, in which c1 denotes the count of units of commodityC1 that have the same price as c2 units of commodityC2, or, in --

(c1/c1)C1=(1)C1=(c2/c1)C2

-- in which (c2/c1)
represents the C2 “price” of one unit of commodityC1 -- the indicated merequantifiers,
though applied to qualitativelyheterogeneouscommodities,
seem to render them qualitativelyhomogeneous; proverbial “apples” versus “oranges”,
made ‘equatable’,
as if by some kind of mysticmagic.”

“However, in reality, to deeperpsychohistoricaldiscernment, such as that achieved by Karl Marx,
this ‘exchange-equating’,
this ‘‘‘homogenization’’’, is rendered possible-- is rendered‘sustainedly
practic[e]able’ long-term -- only by way of a common quality, invisiblyunitingC1&C2, but whose ‘arithmeticalunitqualifiersymbol’, representing that quality-in-common, is absent, is elided, in both of the equations above.”

“This syntactical absencerepresents -- symbolizes -- a substantive absence, from common capitalist consciousness,
from the common mind of the
capitalistepoch, from the predominant «mentalité» of capitalist humanity --
from the ‘humanphenome’ of the
capitalist interval of human-historical time, i.e., from the capitalist ‘historical«species»’ of humanity [cf. Marx on “historical specificity”] -- of this common quality, which is unknown to that mind; whose meme is missing from that stage of the developing ‘humanphenome’.”

“This common quality
is created and sustained -- continuallyreproduced -- by an unconsciousalchemy of ourown «praxis» of capitalist
competition -- e.g., of pricecompetition -- itself, i.e., by an unconscious and unintended aspect of ourownsocialagency; of ourownsocial-reproductive‘‘‘subject-ivity’’’; of ourowndailyactivity.”

“This common quality,
and the ‘arithmeticalunitqualifier’
that can representit, becomes known, to such agents, only if theyscientificallytheorize, or become acquainted with
otheragents’scientific theorizations,
of the phenomenon
of exchange-value
within a[ny] capital-centered,
capital-dominatedsociety.”

“This common quality
-- of capitalist commodities, of capital-producedcommodities;
of “commodity-capital”
[Marx] -- becomes known to such agentsonly, albeit only partially, only distortedly, via the labor-timevaluetheories of, for example, Adam
Smith, Benjamin Franklin, David Ricardo, etc.”

[Aside:“Of course, Marx’s“law”of value is his analytical
abstraction, to enable the theorization
of thecapitalistsystem. It is an ‘‘‘homeomorphic’’’ short-cut or proxy that allows
the dialecticalderivation
and prediction
of the long-termtendencies of that system, in abstraction from
a witheringly-detailed micro-analysis of the actual historical course of the competitions of individualcapital[istenterprise]s.Actual, ‘‘‘socially-necessary-abstract-labor-timevalues’’’ are
actually ever-changing, and empirical prices are ever-deviating from, and “hunting” for, those [changing]
values, and
therefore are continually fluctuating above and below those values, driven by the market competition of capitals.”

“The ‘‘‘abstract-labor-time value’’’
of any capitalistcommodityonly appears, empirically
-- as itsprice -- momentaneously, and,
even then, only as modified by other conditionsimmanent
to thecapitals-system,
such as the process
of thecompetition of capitals
that produces
the equalization of the rate of
profit, or the formationofa general rate of profit,
across the socialexpanse of the differingtechnicalcompositions/productivities of productiveindustrialcapitals.”

“That ‘‘‘abstract-labor-time value’’’
is like a [ “strange”] attractor of an asymptotically aperiodicnonlineardynamicalsystem, and of a nonlineardynamicalsystem that is also continually “bifurcated” by causesexternal to that system proper, and is also continually ‘self-bifurcated’
by causesinternal to that system proper, e.g., by the growthofproductivity, or of the “productiveforce”, of industrializedcapitals’commodity-production.”

“Indeed, so ‘fluctuatory’, so
oscillatory, are the phenomenologies
of ‘price-attractors’ within the capitals-system,
that one might [mis]take
those phenomenologies
to be “pure”, “random” fluctuation only, without even any
transient central tendencies of any kind.”].”

“Let us denote, by L(.), a function/operator that returns, when applied to a symbol that represents a given «species» of commodity, the quantity of hours of generic, “abstract” [Marx] humanlabor typically needed to reproduce a single unit of that commodity under the presently, momentaneouslyprevailingconditions of the competitivecapitalistmarket for that commodity, including the labor-productivity
of the mostadvancedfixedcapitaltechnologypresently being applied to itsalreadymarketedproduction.”

“Let us denote, by l, the ‘arithmeticalunitqualifier’ for a singleunit, say a singlehour, of that generic, “abstract”humanlabor time.Let l1 denote the quantity
of “abstract” or
generichumanlabor hourspresentlyneeded to reproduce a unit of commodityC1, and l2 the quantity
of “abstract”humanlabor hourspresentlyneeded to reproduce a unit of commodityC2.”

“Then:What must be going on, therefore, per such deeperdiscernment, can be
reflected, explicitly, symbolically, by
inserting, into those ‘exchange
equations’, on both sides of each such equation, this ‘arithmetical ontological*qualifier’operator/function, L(.), to stand for the “abstract”humanlabor timekind
of thing/common quality shared by all capital-producedcommodities, thereby
achieving a ‘‘‘re-qualification’’’
ofthoseequations, with a symbolicprovision
for/representative of that
common quality, viz. --

[(c1)C1=(c2)C2]==>[(c1)L(C1)=(c2)L(C2)]==>

[(c1)(l1)l=(c2)(l2)l]

-- or --

(l1)l=(c2/c1)(l2)l

-- where we restore the
heretofore elided‘arithmeticalunitqualifier’,
so as to make the exchange
equationsmake
sense -- that is, so as to make the exchange equations address the same kind of thing,
the samecommon quality, the same ‘arithmeticalunitqualifier’, l, on both
the left hand side and the right hand side of these exchange equations, rather than, as before,
equating “apples & oranges”.”

“Let us next “decode” the genericalgebra above into a specific, hypothetical caseexample, so as to obtain a
more direct, morespecific -- i.e., an arithmetical --
“feel” for what the genericalgebra above really means.”

“Suppose that we imagine a moment of human-socialtime in which it typically
takes 30“abstract”humanlabor hours to produce
each single bed, and 10generichumanlabor hours to produce
each single chair,
and in which agenerichumanlaborhour
[for both] costs $10.”

“To arrive at the simplest, uttermostroot -- the “economic cell-form”
«arché» -- of capital[ist][
exchange]-value,
Marxabstracted
out, e.g., the Money[-price]
mediation of
typical, present-dayexchanges in capitalistsociety, driving that mediation back into implicitude.”

“For clarity, we shall now put
that Money[-price]
mediation back, explicitly, into these ‘Elementary Form of Value’exchange equations, moving to
the more ‘thought-concrete’ presentation-step of explicitude
for the “Money-Form” of value, and for its ‘‘‘money-mediatedcirculationofcommodities’’’
[generically‘algebraicized’, by KarlMarx, as, e.g., C-M-C’, such that commodity C is qualitativelyunequal to commodity C’].Let us,
therefore, for familiarity’s sake, now relax that abstraction, and explicitly posit symbolization for the Moneymedium
into our thus revised,
&caseexampleconcretized, exchange equations --

(6)chairs=(2)beds;

(6)chairs=(600)dollars=(2)beds, instantiatingMarx’s “C-M-C’”;

(6/6)chairs=(600/6)dollars, ==>

(1)chair(s)=(100)dollars, the unit price for chairs is $100;

(2)beds=(600)dollars, ==>

(2/2)beds=(600/2)dollars, ==>

(1)bed(s)=(300)dollars, the unit price for beds is $300.”

“Now, let us make the exchangeequations “commensurable”, by
re-expressing them in
terms of the “abstract”
or generichumanlabor hourspresentlyneeded to reproduce a unit of the commodity “beds”, and of
the commodity
“chairs”, as of the hypothetical present moment of our example --

(6)L(chairs)=(2)L(beds);

(6×10)l=(2×30)l;

(60)l=(60)l;

(6)(10)/(60)l=(60/60)l=(600/60)dollars, ==>(1)l=(10)dollars;

the unit-price for the “abstract” or generichumanlabor powercommodity
is $10 per hour.”

“Thus, if a critical theory ofcapitalism -- of ourcapital-«praxis»
-- is in place, i.e., if Marx’s“law”of value is in the minds of the humanpersonifications/agents
of the “socialrelationsofproduction” that are incorporated into, and
intrinsic to, that «praxis»
-- “social relations of
production” named, per their Marxian names, as the“Commodity-relation”, the “Money-relation”, and the “«Kapital»-relation” itself -- then the “common quality”
of capitalistexchange-values can be restored to those agents’awarenesses of capitalism’sexchange-relations.The ‘arithmetical ontological*qualifier’labor-hourunit, l, for the “abstract” or generichumanlabor hourspresentlysociallynecessary for the reproduction of givenCommodities, can then be representedexplicitly in the exchangeequations.Under this immanent critique, those equationstransform as follows --

(c1)C1=(c2)C2becomes(c1)(l1)l=(c2)(l2)l;

(c1)C1=(m)M=(c2)C2becomes(c1)(l1)l=(m)$=(c2)(l2)l;

(6)chairs=(2)bedsbecomes(6)(10)l=(2)(30)l, and;

(6)chairs=(600)dollars=(2)bedsbecomes

(6)(10)l=(60)(10)$=(2)(30)l.”

“However, for those personifications
of these socialrelations
who remain unaware of the critical theory ofcapitalism, and of itspsychohistorical“law”of value, which names a patterninadvertentlycreated and continuallyreproduced
by theirownactivities, of price-competition,
etc., and by the similaractivities of othersuchhuman agents, these exchangerelations/equations remain opaque.”

“Therefore, every continually
repeated daily act
of monetarypurchase, of the exchange of quantities of givencommodityunits for quantities
of moneyunits, incessantly engaged and practiced by all of
weagents, inculcates and reinforces, in ourminds, both unconsciously and semi-consciously,
its seeming reduction of allqualities to “pure”quantity;
itsqualifier-elided, use-valuequalities-elided, ‘qualitativity’-elided, “pure”‘‘‘quant’’’paradigm, and «mentalité»; the typical «mentalité» of modern, capitalisthumanity.”

“Allthis is reflected, psychohistorically, in the modern“standard”, ‘contra-ancient’arithmetics,
of “pure”, ‘unqualifiedquantifiers’, starting with the so-called “Natural” numbers, i.e., with the elements of the set N=
{1, 2, 3,
...}, and continuing on into those of the sets, or spaces,
W, Z, Q, and R.”

“Karl Marx identifies
the root
issue of this whole matter as follows --

“In
order to discover how the elementary expression of the value of a commodity
lies hidden in the value-relation of two commodities, we must, in the first
place, consider the latter entirely apart from its quantitative aspect.The usual mode of procedure is generally the
reverse, and in the value-relation nothing is seen but the proportion between
definite quantities of two different sorts of
commodities that are considered equal to each other.Itisapttobeforgotten
that the magnitudes
of different
things can be compared quantitatively, only when
those magnitudes
are expressed in terms of
the sameunit.It is only as expressions of such a unit
that they are of the samedenomination, and therefore commensurable.Whether 20 yards of linen = 1 coat or = 20
coats or = x coats -- that is, whether a given quantity of linen is worth few or many coats, every such statement
implies that linen and coats, as magnitudes of value, are expressionsofthesameunit, things of the samekind.Linen = coats is the basis of the
equation.But the two commodities whose
identity of quality is thus assumed, do
not play the same part. ... .”

-- is Marx’s name for the epoch-making cognitive
‘psycho-mutation’ in the ‘humanphenome’ that makes the capitalistsystem collectively-cognitively, culturally possible, & that, via the dailyhumanexperiences
of capital-dominatedsociety, expandedlyreproduces that
‘psycho-mutation’ throughout the capitalistepoch,
spreading out over the face of the earth with the “world market”.”

“In the epoch of the ancientMesopotamiancivilizations, and even so
late as that of the ancientMediterraneanHellenisticcivilization, the prevailing ‘humanphenome’, the prevailingindividualhuman «mentalité»,
was notyet quite so permeated by the unconscious/semi-consciousparadigm
of the socialpractices of exchange-value exchange, let alone by that of capital-value,
as has been our post-Renaissance epoch, so that theirearlyarithmetics
still featured ‘arithmeticalqualifiers’.”

“Onlypre-capitalistforms of the Commodity-[barter-]relation, and of the Money-relation, and only the “antediluvian” forms of capital -- usurer’scapital, mercantilecapital, and slave-labor-based [not yet wage-labor-based]
latifundialagriculturalproductivecapital, were as yet extant
in theancientepoch.”

“The attained levels of the human-societal
self-force of human-societal
self-reproduction, of the ‘meta-Darwinian’ self-reproductive force of the human
species, throughout the ancientepoch, were insufficient
to even episodically induce,
let alone to sustain,
the fulldevelopment of “thecapital-relation”:industrialcapitalism.”

“The human «praxis»
of exchange-value exchange
achieved even greater socialpractice ‘‘‘density’’’, or ‘‘‘concentration’’’, than
ever before, in
the ‘social singularity nucleation zones’
of proto-Renaissance Europe, e.g., in what was to become Italy, where, e.g.,
double-entry accounting for capitalistenterprises
first spread, & where western
acceptance of Indo-Arabic numeration first surged.”

“The stage was thereby
prepared for the formation
of the ‘Elementary Form of
Value’ as the unrecognized cognitive core of modernsociety, for the eventual
irruption of industrialcapitalism -- of capitalismproper -- and for the elision of the ‘arithmeticalqualifiers’, as a ‘‘‘superstructural’’’ psychohistoricalreflection of that formation.”

“This Foundation is designed to be a harbinger of the higherglobalcivilization; of the firstplanet-wide
-- Terra-wide
-- Renaissance;
of the supplementarily-oppositesystem, the highersuccessor-system,
to the present,
capitals-system.
By this, we mean the highersuccessor-system
whose foundation
is generalizedequity,
as the successorpredominant“social relation of production”
to capital
as predominant“social relation of production”;
the ‘‘‘equitist’’’society, of Political-EconomicDemocracy, that is to
come, if this planetary human species“passes”
its looming
‘Meta-Darwinian Planetary Selection Test’ global crisis of humanity.”

“It is fitting, therefore,
that the [dialectical]
arithmetics,
discovered, wielded, and propagated by this Foundation, as cognitive-psychohistoricalharbingers of
a society no
longer obsessively centered upon “the
exchange-value”
[Marx], but, on the contrary, centered upon that higher form of individual, personal, localuse-value
which is social, collective, nonlinearuse-value; which is ‘meta-Darwinian
human-species-fitness-advancing’ human-societal
self-reproductiveuse-value;
which is human-societal self-reproductiveself-force itself,
are dialecticalideographies which -- helically, spirally, in a higherform -- restore the ‘arithmeticalqualifiers’ ofold,
of the ‘humanphenome’before
its formation of
the ‘money-mind’ -- i.e., of the ‘capital-mind’ -- of the ‘exchange-valuemind’; of the ‘‘‘quant’’’mind, one-sidedly, “purely”quantitative
in its [thus] mal-appreciation
of reality -- of thehuman experienceentire.”

“Again, we should emphasize,
this return
of the ‘arithmeticalqualifiers’, and of the ‘qualitativeaspect ofarithmeticalideography’; this [psycho]historicalre-emergence and restoration
of the ‘arithmeticalqualifiers’, is no merelycyclical, circularreturn.It is, on the contrary, a “returnwithdevelopment”.”

“This return, too, exhibits a
collective-cognitive ‘psychohistorical hysteresis’,
a psychohistorical gain -- by this time, so long afterthe last Dark Ages -- relative
to the development of ‘arithmeticalqualification’ as it stood even at itszenithdevelopmentbefore those Dark Ages.”

“This revelation will not
be immediately accessible to most of those most afflicted with the “Elementary Form of Value”
cognitive deformation.Those whose minds
are, mostly unconsciously, pervaded and permeated by this one-sided “Elementary Form of Value”paradigm will not be quickly or easily able to detect
its impact upon their thought and feeling -- to
discern how this paradigmpossesses their
cognition; how pervasively it appropriates and molds their entire awareness.”

“Assimilation of thisrevelation requires time,
reflection, thorough self-inspection, deep introspection and meditation -- to which the Foundation’s “cloistered”
conditions are conducive -- even to discern it, let alone to transcend it; let
alone for modernhumans to freethemselves from that cognitivedeficit.”

“We have found that the
learning of the F.E.D.dialecticalideographies -- the F.E.D. systems of qual[o-quant]itative arithmetic/algebra -- and their application to the ‘meta-modeling’
of the ouruniverse, and of its sub-universes,
can serve as a powerfulpsychohistoricaltherapeuticpractice, for amending, and helping to heal, the cognitive diseases of
the contemporary
‘humanphenome’,
and for preparing the way to the higher ‘humanphenome’to
come.”

*[Our ‘arithmeticalqualifier’ herein, l, is actually a ‘compoundqualifier’, the product of a ‘metricalqualifierunit’ [muo1] for
the time dimension, e.g., for hours, with an ‘ontologicalqualifierunit’ for that
Marxian-discerned “kind
of being” which is industrial-capital-immanent“abstracthumanlabor” [m1],
such that, in the 7th, Rm_system of dialecticalarithmetic in the F.E.D.
[meta-]systematicdialecticalpresentation of the dialecticalprogression of the F.E.D.dialecticalarithmetics,
l
would be more richly re-expressed as --